First Impression 2

Chapter 45

-Hayley's POV-

Life had never been a garden overflowing with flowers for me. There was no white picket fence or sparrows hopping across a neatly manicured lawn. My life wasn't ever a picture perfect moment like they showed in movies. There was no big blue ocean that stretched across the horizon with a sunset backdrop. There was no constant joy in my life.

Life, for me, was a brown dead garden that had been abandoned and weeds overwhelmed the new fragile roots of life. The white picket fence was broken and the paint was chipped. The grass was short spurts of dead pokey thorns that couldn't even be walked upon with bare feet. The big blue ocean was a barren wasteland that had dried up years ago with a drought.

There was little joy in my life.

But even though all of this was true, that didn't mean I wanted it to be that way for everyone. I wanted others to be happy. I wanted Logan happy more than anything, and as for my mother, well, she needed happiness. Every time some sort of stable joy dared to creep into our lives, a pesky little demon pried its way in a disposed of it all.

Doubt.

I had experienced doubt many times in my life. I doubted my abilities to pass a test or to make it home in time for curfew. I had doubted Kyle's intentions in dating me and my mother's in dating Ryan. I had doubted my father's work before he passed on. But rarely, had I ever truthfully doubted Niall.

Niall had left me alone in times of need, yes, but it was always because of his temper that he could never seem to fully control. Not because there was another person in his life. If Ryan's intention was to get me upset and overthink everything I had ever been sure about in my life, then he did just that.

It had been a week. A week since that pesky seed was planted and buried into my brain. I didn't believe it was true. I wouldn't believe it was true. Niall loved me and I loved him. That was established. Nothing was going to tear us apart. Nothing.

We were not like my parents. I was not my mother.

We were not like his parents. We wouldn't need a second chance.

We were us. I was his and he was mine. That's what I had been telling myself and that was what would continue to happen.

I scribbled down my check out time on the sign out sheet at work and pulled a jacket over my arms. The spring air had finally moved in and it looked as if it was here to stay. I waved goodbye to Bryson and started to make my way to a local bar just a block away.

I was supposed to meet Matt and McKenna for dinner. Normally I would have just gone back to the room and studied some more, but I had blown them off enough already and besides, I needed some something to help me stop thinking about the inevitable phone call I was to be expecting and the stupid seed of doubt in my head.

-

I walked into the small bar and immediately I saw a big guy with blonde hair waving his arm in the air with a small brunette beside him. I laughed to myself and took a seat at the tall table with them.

"She's finally out of her cave." Matt teased as the waitress brought us all water.

"Ha. Ha. You're such a funny little shit, you know that?" I said sarcastically but Matt only smiled wider.

Matt and I continued to bicker back and forth until McKenna interrupted our teasing hostility. "So Niall is coming back next week. It's come quick."

I let out a small sigh. For her it may have came quick but for me it dragged on.

I had managed to keep myself as busy as possible to avoid overthinking everything. I was either at work or burying myself in homework. The last two weeks had been too long and too stressful for my likening.